My Amainezing Weekend!

Doug and I recently spent a weekend in Maine, and as you have probably deduced from the title of this post, it was pretty great.

Maine? In December? Some of you might ask. Yes! Maine! In December! Because while Maine is very cold in the winter it is also very cheap.

Traveling in the off-season is amazing. None of the restaurants are crowded, room rates, are low, and everything is decorated for Christmas. Who needs swimming in the ocean and tanning on the beach when you can get an Irish coffee in the middle of the day then hole up in your room and watch cable access shows about kittens up for adoption at the local ASPCA and cars for sale at the lot down the street?

Here is a rundown of what we did:

2 hour naps taken -2

Lobsters eaten - 4

Oysters eaten - 29

Dishes containing lobster eaten - 3

Drinks consumed before 5pm - 5

Christmas lights seen - millions

Stories told by cab drivers about drunk female fares getting out and peeing in

strangers' driveways - 1

I Only Disappeared For A Month Because I Love You

It's December! And you know what that means. It's the time of year for attending holiday parties, shopping for presents, and listening to me promise once again that I really am going to start updating my blog on a somewhat regular basis.

Devoted readers, I know you probably feel like you are in an abusive relationship with my blog. It draws you back in with vows that there will again be weekly posts, only to disappoint you by remaining unchanged for months. This time though, things will be different. I swear! The holidays have turned me into a new person. One who isn't so overwhelmed by life that the thought of writing a couple of paragraphs every week about something stupid her cat did for the amusement of four people makes her want to build a fort under her desk and never come out.

On that note, here is a recap of my Thanksgiving:

I took a train to Pennsylvania on Thursday morning. Because my grandmother recently moved into a retirement community and hasn't managed to organize her things enough to allow for guests, my father and I had to stay in a hotel by the airport. After checking in, we met my aunt and uncle at my grandmother's apartment, then went to dinner at a restaurant. This might not have been so bad, except that the kind of restaurants my grandmother tends to favor are ones where at least half of the other diners are falling asleep in their wheel chairs and she can complain about the poor quality of the food as soon as we get to the parking lot. This year was made extra fun by the fact that I'm a vegetarian and the only thing on the menu that didn't contain animal stock was a pasta dish that left a fuzzy film on my tongue after I'd eaten it. We then spent the rest of the weekend trying to organize my grandmother's things.

Exchange between my grandmother and I after my dad and uncle finished bringing Christmas decorations up from storage at her request:

Grammy: Have you been in the living room?

Me: Today?

G: Come look at the living room.

Me: (standing in the living room) What?

G: (pointing at the boxes they brought up) Look at this mess. They call this helping?

Me: They're going to clean everything up after you go through it.

G: When my friend Bea moved in, her children came and organized everything in her apartment. They set it all up for her, and she didn't do a thing.

Me: That's what your kids are trying to do, but you keep yelling at them. You think it's great when your friends' kids help them, but when your own try to help you, you complain about it.

G: (looking into a box) Oh look, a snow globe! I don't remember packing that.

I already have my holiday plans for next year and they involve staying in New York, making my own food, and eating leftovers in my pajamas for three days.